Joy Riding

I confess that I feel some disdain towards "toy bike riders." That's what I call the folks who love their involvement in mountain biking or road biking as a purely recreation or competition pursuit, but would never consider transportation cycling. Previous commentary HERE.

Despite my "holier than thou" unrighteous pride, riding for the sheer joy of riding is a pretty nice pursuit.

I was fortunate this week to ride some new territory.

I'm an advisor for a group of Varsity/Venturer BSA youth (ages 14-17), and we did our annual "High Adventure" in the Cascade / Donnelly / McCall area.

On Day 1 we rode to Lower Boulder Lake, a few miles east of McCall. It was a pretty good poke for us amateurs; probably 3.5 miles of steady, unrelenting uphill to get there, followed by the steady downhill on the way back. It tested both our stamina and skill.





The next day, my colleagues (who don't ride much in "real life") had had enough, but I needed more riding. So... I reconnoitered the area around our base camp near Donnelly, at the north end of Cascade Lake. It was sweeeeet!